Same as with every other social media … the people.
I’m not your friend, buddy!
I’m not your buddy, guy!
Im not your guy, pal!
I’ll be your pal
It’s just as bad of an echo chamber as other sites. I have to actively “stop” browsing lemmy after a bit because I get annoyed at the repetitive nature of everything.
I’ve very much tried in the last few years to limit social media. I think it’s been a benefit for me. I like social media, but having “stops” makes it more enjoyable and prevents the doom feelings.
Niche communities. Large spaces are built of small niche interest groups. The tooling around small spaces needs to be first class if we want the larger space to be healthy
lemmy.ml and its admins being the developers at the same time.
I don’t think that in itself if the problem. anyone can host an instance. The problem is lemmy.ml being the apparent default instance, advertising itself as an instance for privacy and FOSS enthusiasts, and not mentioning seemingly anywhere in the description/rules that only red flavour authoritarian dogma is allowed in political discussion.
“America bad, therefore former ‘communist’ russia and current ‘communist’ china good.”
Edit: it’s not featured as prominently as it used to be on join-lemmy.org so things may be improving. they should still mention in the description that western viewpoints on many issues are not allowed due to “rule 1”
I realized .ml was fucking insane and delusional when they glorified Stalin and refused to recognize the atrocities he committed.
No matter what your political stance is, as soon as you deny negative facts and exclusively push the “positives” it becomes a problem and may radicalize you (if that isn’t already the case).
What happened to nuanced moderate politics? It seems people unconditionally put the “left” or “right” label on themselves. And ironically these blind followers will have the audacity to call anyone close to the political center, or people who are honest with themselves, cowards.
Yeah, well the guy who runs it is a notorious tankie.
You either tow the pro stalinist line or you are punished
They certainly mislead me. My first year or so was on lemmy.ml @[email protected]
After repeated bans i decided to move to a more relaxed instance. i still interact with lemmy.ml because some of the bigger open source communities are there, but .ml admins now cannot block me from accessing the full lemmyverse, only their diminishing corner of it
Lemmy.ml needs to be defederated from all other instances. It’s literally an extremist instance of hate and bigotry.
Onboarding. I think it’ll be better if people promoted individual instances instead of Lemmy as a whole. As a whole, it seems vague.
Or if instances used the word “Lemmy” in their domain names. I can say “go to Lemmy.world or Lemmy.zip or Lemmy.cafe” but if I tell someone to go “sh.itjust.works” they will get confused and wonder why “that site is not Lemmy?”
I advocate the opposite. Because people then see “lemmy.world” and immediately associate it with the rumours about the devs being tankies even though .world and the lemmy devs are unrelated
Maybe. Some people might not even know what a tankie is until they start using Lemmy.
I didn’t. Tankie was a completely new word to me when I started here.
It’s just as much a left-wing echo chamber as Truth Social is a right-wing one - and that’s a problem in both cases. Some might say it’s fine because we’re on the right side of history and they’re not, or something along those lines - but the people on Truth Social think the exact same thing. No one’s views ever change that way.
The right wing instances are just defederated from this larger federated group because the people on them were unable to follow the rules of other instances. Repeatedly, they would throw tantrums and create loads of dupe accounts to spam shit when people downvoted their shitty views or their accounts got banned. If they were capable of behaving with civility and following the rules, they’d still be here.
No idea how active that corner of the Lemmyverse is these days, but they have repeatedly chosen to behave in a way that leaves instance administrators with little choice other than defederation.
There is also a dearth of cannibalistic viewpoints here. And Zoroastrians are woefully underrepresented.
I don’t come here to change my views (though it happens from time to time), and neither do they. I’m not ignorant of their thoughts; I’m inundated with them every day. I don’t need to interact with assholes here. I don’t want to come here and watch people scream back and forth at each other, and I definitely am not interested in participating—there is a reason I’ve left other social media.
You don’t have to subscribe to political communities if you don’t want to see political discussion. But the dearth of genuine political discussion here is a problem for the people who do want it, that can’t be fixed by individual action.
But the dearth of genuine political discussion here is a problem for the people who do want it
It’s not genuine if we don’t want to constantly have to expose ourselves to toxic bigots or “smooth” manipulators who think it’s not really toxic bigotry if they are “just asking questions?”
It’s not genuine if we don’t want to start every single discussion of something bad Trump did with rebutting a half dozen versions of “but whatabout that time when dems…”?
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:
I will not be shamed into allowing toxicity into my life, on social media or otherwise, in the name of “avoiding an echo chamber.” NOTHING is stopping a conservative from coming here and making cogent, factual arguments, aside from their own fragility.
The conservatives who “can’t” post to Lemmy are the ones who don’t know how to have an actual conversation and get banned. What fraction of conservatives that represents is an excercise left to the reader. But I’ve got my own opinion on that number for sure.
NOTHING is stopping a conservative from coming here and making cogent, factual arguments, aside from their own fragility.
Except for all the Lemmys saying that no conservatives should be allowed on Lemmy. I have seen conservatives try to ask a question. Then so many immediately jump to calling the poster a sealioning nazi, that they just get run off. Lemmy is one of the more hateful places I have seen.
I’m not conservative by the way, so you all don’t have send me nazi dm’s.
The problem is the right no longer argue their points in good faith.
“The right” consists of individuals, just like “the left” does - and there’s plenty of bad faith to be found on both sides.
Is this like plenty of fine people on both sides? In aggregate, one side is far more egregious and it’s not even close.
Speaking of bad faith…
Yes, and just like Trump, I’m not speaking of the white nationalists and nazies.
"So you know what, it’s fine. You’re changing history. You’re changing culture. And you had people – and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists – because they should be condemned totally. But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists. Okay? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly.
“Now, in the other group also, you had some fine people. But you also had troublemakers, and you see them come with the black outfits and with the helmets, and with the baseball bats. You had a lot of bad people in the other group.”
Note that this is the second statement he made, which he had to make after being called out by the media for seemingly supporting the neonazi protestors. Which, given his history at that point and subsequently, it’s pretty obvious that the media was right and he was just back tracking due to bad publicity.
This is where the “fine people on both sides” quote originates from.
Snopes article on the matter.
Yeah, and it specifically ignores that the statement you posted was the second, clarifying statement days later. Snopes is going off what he said he meant, not actually what he said. Check the United the Right wiki page for the actual timeline.
Stop letting other people think for you.
Trump did not respond to the torchlight parade on Friday night or the demonstrations on Saturday morning until 1:19 pm on Saturday, August 12, when he tweeted, “We ALL must be united & condemn all that hate stands for. There is no place for this kind of violence in America. Lets come together as one!”[284][33]
At the bill-signing ceremony, Trump said that “we condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides”.[284][33][288][289] He added that it had been “going on for a long time in our country. Not Donald Trump, not Barack Obama. A long, long time” and that “a swift restoration of law and order” was now vital.[289]
A statement attributed to an unnamed White House spokesperson was released the next day, asserting that "The President said very strongly in his statement yesterday that he condemns all forms of violence, bigotry, and hatred. Of course that includes white supremacists, KKK, Neo-Nazi and all extremist groups. He called for national unity and bringing all Americans together
…
After the backlash for his remarks, Trump read a statement from a teleprompter two days later at the White House.[310][292] He said that “anyone who acted criminally in this weekend’s racist violence, you will be held fully accountable.”[287] and that “[r]acism is evil. And those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the K.K.K., neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.”[311]
The closest they have is the unattributed statement, again after the fact, trying to clarify what he said wasn’t what he meant. Like they always do.
Uh huh, and I’m sure we can take him at his word. It’s not like he’s ever lied. He never gave a nod to nazis ever, like telling the proud boys to stand by. Yup, good old not racist donnie, I’m sure he totally hates white supremacists.
You wanna talk bad faith, believe anything that comes out of his orange piehole.
Misrepresenting what someone says is a textbook example of bad faith so doing that in a discussion about bad faith is ironic to say the least. What he actually thinks is unrelated to this discussion as it’s about what he said. You’d call people out for twisting your words so hold yourself to the same standards.
You are appearing more and more bad faith, or just plain grossly ignorant, and willfully so… If you won’t accept the truth, the truth that is being handed to you, with references, by other people, then prepare to not be part of this “echo chamber” for much longer…
Not believing lying sociopaths is not bad faith, and I’m having trouble accepting that you’d actually think it is. I’m not sure why you’re so hung up on mango mussolini anyway, as this discussion started when I claimed that the right lied way more than the left. The president wasn’t responsible for all the lies the GOP has told for the past 50 years, although he sure does have more than his fair share.
I don’t think there is such a thing as a left wing echo chamber. We bicker incessantly. The other day I was making a joke at the expense of the car-brain mentality and someone came at me for ableism.
I’m not mad at them, it’s just illustrative of my point. We don’t take shit from each other, and we take each other to task over jokes. The right will, meanwhile, forgive literal pedophilia, rape, and murder of each other. I’m sure as hell not saying we should, but we will never create an echo chamber as good as they do because of that.
I think the main problem is that there isn’t much besides politics and memes. Most communities that aren’t politics seem to devolve into meme communities.
I feel like that’s an issue that’s exacerbated by the predominance of image posts over text posts, and text post only communities.
Agreed on all counts.
The real mystery to me is what value the echo-chamber residents get out of it. Why would someone join a group of people they already agree with, just to be told that their opinions are correct, and to shout down any interloper who contradict them? How is that not a boring waste of time? Is it that most people are insecure in their views and need validation, perhaps? It’s a phenomenon I still don’t understand.
People often accuse me of being a troll because I tend to voice views that are unpopular on this platform. Personally, I just don’t see any point in talking about things we all already agree on. I’d much rather try to change the views of those I disagree with - or have them try to change mine.
This exactly where I am on all counts. Stick with it!
I’d much, much rather be in an echo chamber where BS is questioned and reality is not ignored than a conservative hellscape where basic facts of reality are ignored, like, “tons of CO2 in the atmosphere is totally fine, actually” or, “trans people are corrupting sports!”.
Yea… fuck those at best extremely stupid people and at worst, vitriolic piles of trash.
Some might say it’s fine because we’re on the right side of history and they’re not, or something along those lines
I say it’s fine because if there’s one thing I’ve learned repeatedly since about 2017, it’s that the single most effective thing I can do to reduce toxicity in my life is to reduce my interactions with conservative family members, coworkers, ‘friends’, and social media accounts.
It’s remarkably effective. I interact with no conservative or known trump voter more than work or family obligations require. Haven’t for years. Best mental health step I’ve taken in my adult life.
Not my fault they have all forgotten that “loudest asshole in the room” isn’t a personality.
would you like to tell me which political side is currently putting people in concentration camps and starting a war
The lemmy.ml instance not being treated the same as the rest of the Triad in regards to defederation
Some highlights from the link:
"Don’t worry guys, the Uyghur Genocide was REALLY just birth control! ~dessalines, .ml admin, dev https://lemmy.world/post/30580167
“See! nobody died IN Tiananmen Square, just AROUND it, so it doesn’t count!!” ~ Davel, .ml admin https://lemmy.world/post/30673342
.ml admin, Nutomics continued transphobia https://lemmy.world/post/29222558
CW: Original transphobic Comment from Nutomic
“NK is actually good and anything counter to that is Western propaganda!” ~dessalines, .ml admin, dev https://lemmy.world/post/31595035
General negative sentiment to other instances who haven’t “seen the way” yet ~davel, .ml admin https://lemmy.world/post/27426510
“If you don’t support Russia then you just don’t understand geopolitics” ~dessalines, .ml admin, dev https://lemmy.world/post/27352415
And a long list of bans/censorship and allowing the proliferation of known propaganda and misinformation outlets clearly demonstrating use of their instance and recognition to force a political narrative
I am currently working on a report on vote manipulation and the early results are showing clear signs of the some most prolific .ml accounts participating in brigading and vote manipulation.
I can’t count the number of times I made a comment way deep in a chain that conflicts with .ml dogma, and after the first downvote, there are suddenly 5 more within minutes
PieFed doesn’t have any of these issues
It does, since it still federates with lemmy.ml…
I think the parent comment is talking about piefed the software, compared to Lemmy the software, not the specific
piefed.socialinstance they’re posting from.
Not enough people for even slightly niche communities. Wanna talk about smash brothers ? 732 people, only 2 posts in the last month.
This is why people still use reddit on the side.
This is exactly why I don’t use Reddit on the side. When I run out of content on Lemmy, there’s no choice but to do something productive instead. Had to go 100% cold turkey on Reddit to make that work though.
Summer was not meant for being productive.
slightly niche
Sports is like the most mainstream of interests, and lemmy still doesn’t have a critical mass of sports discussion in general, much less specific sports/leagues, specific teams, specific games/matches, or specific players.
So I keep my reddit sports account.
I also keep an account for my local city subreddit, and one for my career field, because Lemmy doesn’t have those either.
I’m the main poster on [email protected]. Most popular post on the planet.
I guess people on Lemmy just don’t like sports.
I’ll subscribe, since it’s about the real kind of football (the one that’s played with your feet, and a ball. Not an egg, and your hands)
I’ve been trying to get into sports. Always enjoyed parricipating sports, never tried watching.
Hell even [email protected] (as far as I can tell, the biggest one on the platform) only has like 10k subs, like a dozen posts today, and basically all of the posts were people just advertising music. Zero discussion.
Even for things i would think are big, the communities here are still vanishingly small. I joined reddit in like 2014 and even back then it was more popular than Lemmy is now
The lack of continuous and backlogged content. For some this is a benefit because it gives them a reason to stop scrolling, but for others who come here to look for answers, find entertainment, or anonymously voice their opinions, this can be something of a downside.
Of course this platform is as anonymous as you make it, but I’ve seen some people say they refrain from commenting more often because they don’t want to be known as a regular, instead wanting to “blend in to the crowd” as one would on more populous sites like Reddit or Twitter.
The lack of content compared to reddit. If you look at [email protected] for example, there is only one post this week, and 4 posts this month. How is it that, with all the web developers and AI vibe coding shit, no one is actually asking questions?
When I was on reddit, I had to hide posts because there were 10 or 20 interesting questions every day.
The tankies
Niche communities. Also, attempts at niche communities getting dogpiled by everyone else (no, “this administration” really doesn’t have anything to do with the pedestrianisation of Norwich city centre.)
Smaller user base. It is both good and bad but the community for my city is dead (probably there were only like 8 of us on here).
Am old enough to know from experience that the early people on any platform are the computer geeks so expect the tech communities to thrive first - but as someone else said, music communities die, sports, arts, things that are pretty widely popular. Honestly happy with the slow and steady growth of the [email protected] so if it’s an indicator, the general interest people are joining just not quickly but some must be sticking. I would guess at some point it will be perfect then too big but who knows?
Personally I also miss the nonsexual nudes threads like nakedprogress and normalnudes. Again that’s a lack of users issue, you need a lot of people willing to post, to have even a few willing to post nude.
It’s too difficult to block huge swaths of things you’re not interested in. Like sports, or memes, or music. You block one community and 99 more about the same subject appear in your feed.
Adding some sort of Usenet-style organization or sublemmy tagging might help.
You could just use the Subscribe feed, no?
User volume and diversity is probably the main thing right now.
We just need more people posing shit, the fact that one or two users can dominate my feed if they choose to is not ideal. (Though often I appreciate the content anyway)
The diversity aspect is around how we have a lot of people in a small handful of demographics on here. It’s getting better every day, but the thing that made Reddit great before they ruined it was everything you could think of had a community of people posing stuff about it, doesn’t matter how niche.
One leads to the other though, more users naturally will mean increasingly diverse interests in our userbase.
It’s about time Reddit fucked something else up anyway, it’s been a few months
We just need more people posing shit, the fact that one or two users can dominate my feed if they choose to is not ideal.
That’s because so many on Lemmy would rather downvote than post anything.
The same issue Bluesky and other app-killer platforms have/had at the start: momentum. Momentum explains everything else. If you leave out the vapid content on Reddit, it’s still the premier place for asking questions and getting them answered by enthusiastic amateurs or actual experts in the field. The moment Lemmy gets the same quality tech support and DIY responses, it will have its place. Or, like with Bluesky, Reddit needs to become as alienating and disgusting as X became after the Elon takeover.
That’s the beauty about Lemmy, it’s not too reliant on momentum as it doesn’t need graphs to go up at all times. The fediverse will always be a refuge when other platforms crumble. We’ll just have to be patient and make sure the platform and the communities are as good as they can be at that point in time.
This is how I see it too. Freedom from the toxic ad-supported business model is a slow-burning superpower.
Reddit is useless for questions. If you’re a subject-matter expert in something, find the subreddit for it and prepare to be horrified.
